A couple of years ago, Michael Lebowitz, CEO and founder of Big Spaceship, lobbied us­, from the stage at OMMA Global mind you, to drop the "online" disclaimer from our All Star honors. Each year we celebrate the media, creative and marketing industry figures at the top of the digital industry, and that year Lebowitz was an honoree in the creative category. He, while being inducted into this select group, took the opportunity to express his hope that one day soon the "digital" qualifier would be dropped from our collective psyches.

Even as digital has revolutionized the media business in disruptive ways, the career of Carl Fremont has been a logical evolution. The foundation of his career was built at direct marketing shop Wunderman, where, unlike most of his traditional media counterparts, he was charged with building campaigns that were meant to deliver concrete results. "For me, [digital] was a natural progression of direct marketing," he explains. "Which was getting consumers to take action."

Even though it's been far more than a decade since Trevor Kaufman got his first job in interactive media, the reasons he is still in the business somehow haven't changed. He explains that at his first employer -- the CD-ROM publisher Voyager -- he thought the fact that people could download files electronically and pay for them online via credit card was amazing. Now, his enthusiasm may be directed at much more sophisticated technology, but the focus is the same: on improving the customer experience, these days for Schematic clients such as Dell and Bank of America. "What has excited ...

Last April, when word first got out that iCrossing, a digital agency that made its name on search, was close to being bought by Hearst, it caused head-scratching in an industry most comfortable contemplating its belly button. Why, advertising types thought, would a digital agency sell to the company that publishes Good Housekeeping?

Just before 8 a.m. on a recent Friday, Beth Comstock tweeted that "after a crazy week," the song "Take a Vacation" from the Young Veins was on her mind. Not surprisingly, the high-energy CMO maintains a dizzying pace as she oversees two massive business initiatives, not to mention all marketing at General Electric.

PepsiCo is not acting its age. And that's a good thing. Yes, given the Fortune 500 company's maturity, size and standing, it could be excused for carrying a bit of a paunch, and spending time, figuratively, on the marketing equivalent of a golf cart, with big-spend traditional ad campaigns.

With three-quarters of its marketing budget devoted to digital media, Adobe Systems Incorporated is practicing what it preaches when it comes to digital transformation. A driving force behind the software giant's forward-thinking approach to branding and advertising is Ann Lewnes.

When Apple announced the iPad at the beginning of the year, CEO Steve Jobs told customers that it would only work on AT&T's overloaded 3G network. In just 3 weeks, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners designed and manufactured a sort of sleeve with a built-in personal WiFi branded and powered by client Sprint that turned the highly anticipated tablet into a 4G device. It was the first product made by the agency - from concept to production. "But more than a product, it was a marketing idea," says Christian Haas. "One based on a smart insight."

Ty Montague is in it for the long haul. In more ways than one. His brand-spanking-new company Co: (when we spoke the new agency he had left the top creative spot at JTW to found was all of 8 hours old) presents itself as a new-model partner to CEOs and CMOs. One that gets involved from the product development stage and doesn't just swoop in to set in motion promotional machinery. "We will be there long before the communication is planned," says Montague.

Over a two-decade career that straddled two continents, PJ Pereira has earned a reputation for wide-ranging creativity in everything from ad creative and design to bar management. Pereira & O'Dell, the fast-growing San Francico-based agency he founded with partner Andrew O'Dell in April 2008, is the second major digital firm Pereira has formed from the ground up: he was a cofounder of AgenciaClick, a successful interactive agency in Brazil that he left to take the reins as ECD of AKQA in San Francisco.